Just as cooks pray for a good crop of young animals and fishermen for a good haul of fish, in the same way busybodies pray for a good crop of calamities or a good haul of difficulties that they, like cooks and fishermen, may always have something to fish out and butcher. (Plutarch, "On Being a Busybody")

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

An Ethnic Identity Crisis

Don't miss Chris Weimer's post, Jew or Judean Again, and the discussion in comments. Chris insists that "Judean" be reserved as a geographic/ethnic label, and that "Jew" is a legitimate designation for those in the 2nd-Temple period who had religious connections to Judea in some way. I say that "Jew" is a mistranslation in the bible, for reasons previously laid out here, and that "Judean" is the proper word for Ioudaiou.

UPDATE: In comments Bob Webb mentions an upcoming essay in The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus: "Jesus Was Neither a 'Jew' nor a 'Christian': On Correcting Misleading Nomenclature", by Jack Elliott (5.2, 2007). It should be out sometime this month. Thanks for the heads-up, Bob.

2 Comments:

Bob Webb said...

Loren,

On this issue you might want to see, and perhaps alert readers, to the essay by John H. Elliott, "Jesus Was Neither a 'Jew' nor a 'Christian': On Correcting Misleading Nomenclature" in the next issue of _JSHJ_ 5.2 (2007), which should be out sometime this month.